Enhanced E-books

I don’t really want my fictional characters to sing and dance while I am reading a novel. Having said that, I would love some animations in Science Fiction books.

I would love to see some animations in technical books. Imagine that you are reading a chapter on a four stroke engine. Won’t it be nice, if I can click on the image of the engine and an animation of it appears, right there in the spot? Won’t it be cool if the parts of the in the text start connecting with the 3D image of the engine? Further won’t it be nice if I can draw a line across the engine and it splits open (still working)?

What will this kind of interaction and animation do to children’s books? The content is there. The computing power is there. What will some thing like these enhancements do to various Science and Engineering texts? Or for that matter, History or Geography?

While I have been thinking about this for a while I was triggered by this article and had the urge to tweet:

Enhanced e-book: Will include footage and content, including original video behind-the-scenes footage and songs http://bit.ly/a2l2ky #trends

Where are the tools? What will this do to comprehension? Will it be too distracting (we should be able to turn off and reduce it to a normal book, if we want)? Your thoughts?